What is the Virginia Ball Center?

Our Mission

The Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry provides distinctive, rigorous, and transformative immersive learning experiences. These experiences enable members of the Ball State University community to participate in open inquiry, creative investigations, collaborative research, innovative problem solving, and active learning outside the confines of the conventional classroom. Each experience is designed so that faculty and students can:

explore the connections among the arts, humanities, science, and technology

create a product that illustrates collaborative research and interdisciplinary study

present their product to the community in a public forum

Each year, four Ball State University faculty members are chosen to lead teams of 15 students in these interdisciplinary, immersive seminars. The students are chosen by application or audition. Working together with a community sponsor, each group of faculty and students creates a product to engage the community in public dialogue.

The center provides a summer stipend for each faculty member to prepare the seminar. The center also provides a semester's “leave” for the four fellows—two in the fall and two in the spring—to teach these seminars. Students enrolled in each seminar receive a full semester’s credit for their work. And to help facilitate that work, the center provides each seminar with a significant budget to produce its project.